French Roast Studios A robust blend of game development and independence. - page 2

I heard a lot of good critiques from you guys stating that the female pilots weren’t feminine enough, so I’ve done a second pass at them and posed their previous iteration next to them for reference. The ladies now have more slender necks, wider hips, more slender arms, and less androgynous hair styles. Let me know what you think. That’s why this is called ‘Concept Art’.

So, I had a really interesting idea to add a different aspect of gameplay to TigerHawks. You would assume the role of a fighter pilot, and based on your interaction with other pilots in-between missions, you may receive boosts in abilities, weapons, missions, etc, OR… you may end up pissing off your wing man, thereby making them less eager to help you out with bogeys on your tail.

Here are some concepts of your fighter colleagues. Female pilots are coming soon.

Some people like seeing how I go about drawing this kind of art. Here is a quick Photoshop sketch of the first pilot. From the sketch, I traced and colored him into Flash, then did a TON of touch-ups to get his color, line-weight and proportions looking good. The other pilots use the same body (albeit scaled), and their faces are slightly perturbed from the original (hair color, facial structure, eye shape, mouth shape) until they have their own look.

Here’s some concept art on combat and landing on a carrier. The combat is more open than most shoot’em-ups, where you rely more heavily on radar to track your opponents. Landing ends up being a little mini-game, which helps you build experience. Building experience increases your rank, which allows you to fly more capable planes.

TigerHawks is the latest project in development for FRG. It’s a throwback to classic shmups, with a little something new — in particular one-on-one dogfights and evading/outrunning missiles from the rear of the plane. You can fly different planes with different abilities to better handle the challenges of particular levels. Enlist the aid of drones to mitigate damage and increase your firepower. Tons of enemies to fight against beautiful backdrops. A quirky storyline to boot. TigerHawks will be available for purchase on iOS, Android, and OUYA. No release date yet. Keep your ears open.

I’ve decided to start in on this project to help goad me along in learning HTML5 game development using Cocos2D-html5. The clients want me to be workable in this new environment as soon as possible. It’s a new framework, with new syntax and a new API. So the best way to learn is to jump in and get your hands dirty. I may segue this into learning Obj-C/Cocos2d, since Cocos2D-html5 is a JavaScript binding of the native iOS framework. Wish me luck everyone.